Introduction
Food plays a vital role in our lives. From fields, pastures, and gardens to packing houses and processing facilities to retail spaces, food hubs, community pantries and market spaces to the dining rooms tables of the country, food production and consumption underpins the national economy and society. At each step of this process, food provides value and creates wealth in several ways.
What are Food Systems?
Food systems are defined in a variety of ways by different organizations and agencies. According to the USDA Office of the Chief Economist, “food systems are complex networks that include all the inputs and outputs associated with agricultural and food production and consumption.” Even within USDA, there are different definitions. USDA’s National Agricultural Library defines them simply as “everything from farm to table.” USDA describes local and regional food systems as “place-specific clusters of agricultural producers of all kinds—farmers, ranchers, fishers—along with consumers and institutions engaged in producing, processing, distributing, and selling foods.”
Other definitions include more about the components of a food system. A definition used by the U.S. in its Global Food Security Strategy is “Agriculture and food systems are the intact or whole unit made up of interrelated components of people, behaviors, relationships, and material goods that interact in the production, processing, packaging, transporting, trade, marketing, consumption, and use of food, feed, and fiber through aquaculture, farming, wild fisheries, forestry, and pastoralism. The food and agriculture system operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic, and environmental contexts.” The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) describes food systems as “Food systems encompass the entire range of actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food products that originate from agriculture, forestry or fisheries, and parts of the broader economic, societal and natural environments in which they are embedded. The food system is composed of sub-systems (e.g. farming system, waste management system, input supply system, etc.) and interacts with other key systems (e.g. energy system, trade system, health system, etc.).”
Components of a food system include people, behaviors, relationships and products involved in food, feed, fiber through the processes below:
When this system works well, people are able to access food they want that is nutritious, culturally relevant, and affordable. However, when this food system breaks down, price inflation and supply chain issues can cause nationwide food access and affordability problems. On the local level, many communities have experienced rising food costs, locally owned grocery stores closing, and higher rates of food insecurity. On the national level, food producers and processing companies have conglomerated and grown to monopolize supply chains. On all levels, large-scale food systems have broken down and are failing communities. At the same time, the U.S. is witnessing incremental cultural shifts as individuals change personal consumption habits to return to food and agricultural systems that prioritize local ownership and modes of production.
The key to responding to these systemic issues is a system-level response from municipal and county governments, regional economic development organizations, the private sector, foundations, and non-profit partners working in tandem to improve public health and economic outcomes in their communities. These resulting regional coalitions can create economic opportunity by incentivizing, financing, and promoting local ownership of food production, identifying and building on regional and local assets, and improving nutrition and public health outcomes by ensuring people have access to healthy, quality, affordable food.
As part of this regional response, Economic Development Districts (EDDs) can help their communities address complex food access and affordability issues by using their capacity and experience in facilitation and convening, sourcing and managing federal, state, local, and private funding, and providing public and social service programs. EDDs are regional experts in:
EDDs can use their problem-solving expertise to support locally owned and/or controlled food systems based on regional and local assets. Locally controlled food systems, with a priority on production, processing, distribution, and consumption at the local level, can have outsized public health, climate, and economic impacts on underserved communities and serve as the economic spark needed to revitalize neighborhoods.
This microsite created by the NADO Research Foundation Regional Development Researchers Melissa Levy and Andrew Coker uses the Wealth Creation framework to help EDDs better understand regional food systems development, provide tangible strategies for EDDs that want to engage in food systems work, and give examples of how successful EDDs have grown into this space.
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